


An Admission of Failure

by withcoffeespoons



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fake AH Crew, Female Jack, Gang Violence, M/M, Secrets, Slow Build, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-10-25 14:14:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10765911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withcoffeespoons/pseuds/withcoffeespoons
Summary: Someone once told me that explaining is an admission of failure.I’m sure you remember, I was on the phone with you, sweetheart. -Richard Siken, "Little Beast"In a city where trust is a weapon, secrets are little more than explosive ammunition. In Los Santos, the past always catches up to you, and in Los Santos, everybody has a past.Once betrayed by the city's de facto ruler, Burnie Burns, Geoff Ramsey has fought to build his own crew to take out his revenge. But when a small-time heist goes wrong, the Fakes lose one of their own. Was it just an accident, or is there something more sinister in Los Santos rising up?





	1. Chapter 1

The ground shook, and Geoff’s hand didn’t.

The night clerk cowered in front of fluorescent-lit cigarettes and reflected neon. Even in Los Santos, where convenience store hits were a nightly rite of passage on both sides of the counter, they could teach a kid how he’s _supposed_ to act when he’s held at gunpoint, but it was a whole other animal to actually _feel_ it.

“What the hell was that?” came Jack’s voice in Geoff’s ear. “I could see that explosion from out here.”

Overhead, the hanging fluorescent lights swayed in ripples like an echo.

“Michael, we got company?” Geoff said, jaw clenched. He gestured at Ryan, a silent jab of his chin and a twitch of his gun.

Underneath the leathery black skull mask of the Vagabond, Ryan nodded. He took point, his gun fixed on the shivering clerk.

“No, I mean—shit. It wasn’t me! I—I don’t…” Michael struggled for words.

Geoff’s heart beat faster. “What happened?” he asked, dread settling across his shoulders. “Give me a sitrep—Gavin, you got eyes up there yet?”

“Traffic cams were knocked out in the explosion. Working on it.” Geoff had to credit the kid; his voice didn’t shake. They all knew the plan, but he held steady.

Strained curses were all that came over Michael’s comm. They came with sense-memory flashes of blood and soot before Geoff could shake them off, a mental recitation of the plan reminding him: Michael at a safe distance. He _was_ at a safe distance, right?

“Alright, I—I don’t know why, but the...the charges must have...blown early.” In the raw, hollow space after his words, Geoff heard what Michael wasn’t saying.

Geoff fought for his next breath. “Ray, report.” He waited. “Ray! C’mon kid.” Nothing. He leaned heavily against a shelf of potato chips.

“C—can...you can have it all, can I just…?” The clerk gestured out the door.

“Just get out,” Geoff snapped. Ryan lowered his gun.

“Oh, thank fuck.”

“Ray,” Geoff called again, his voice breaking it into two syllables. No one said anything of it.

They all knew the plan. They all knew that Ray was on the roof of the abandoned building currently raining ash down on the darkened street outside.

“God dammit, Ray, if I don’t hear some of that Liberty City attitude in the next ten seconds…”

“Geoff,” came Gavin’s voice, soft, wounded. “It’s all gone.”

“The hell do you mean _gone_ ?” Ryan snapped. He always wore the mask on the job, but now more than ever, Geoff wished he could see his face, could see what was happening to _Ryan_. In his place, he saw only the Vagabond.

“Who was it?” Geoff asked. “LSPD? Tuggey?” It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Look, I don’t know if it’s Tuggey,” Jack interrupted, “but police scanners have a lot of LSPD headed your way. I’m coming in for pick-up.”

Geoff swallowed his objection. It had taken no time at all for a milk run to go tits up. There wasn’t supposed to be an explosion at all. It was all contingency—Ray on the roof for cover fire _if_ the clerk called the cops. The charges to blow the evidence and smokescreen their getaway _if_ Tuggey caught wind.

“Alright, new plan,” Geoff croaked. “Michael, right now I want you on foot. I need visual confirmation. If Ray is anywhere near there, you get him out.”

“Yes sir,” Michael said, like it was a relief to hear.

“Geoff,” Ryan cautioned, any traces of emotion buried under his professional tone. “I gotta get out of here.”

A flash of betrayal flickered through Geoff’s chest before Ryan gestured with the cash bag. Geoff glanced out at the approaching red and blue lights. “Okay, yeah. Jack, you airlift Ryan and the cash out of here.”

“On it, boss.”

“Ryan, meet her down at the landing zone.” Ryan nodded in acknowledgement before taking off.

“You radio in as soon as you’re in the air!” he called after him. “Gavin,” Geoff began, making for the door, “climb out of that closet back there and ditch the tech. I’m gonna need a hell of a distraction to keep them off Michael and Jack.” The flames across the street cast an ominous orange glow.

“Something flashy?” Gavin said.

“You don’t have to sound so happy about it,” Geoff said, his voice fond.

Beside the definition of flashy, there was a picture of Gavin. Printed in gold leaf.

“Michael, I’m gonna find you a getaway vehicle,” Geoff said. “I want you ready to hop in.”

“Copy that.” After a pause, he added, “Don’t...don’t fucking get a coupe.”

The suggestion left Geoff raw. “I’m not giving up on him, Michael,” he promised.

Geoff liked beautiful cars. Geoff liked going too fast and being too ostentatious, and he especially liked when he could do both at once. He also knew when it paid to fly under the radar. Jack’s helicopter and Gavin’s—whatever—would keep the LSPD occupied, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t find a fast car.

The thing about fast cars is that they’re not born fast. Take a trashy old Honda Civic, give it a lot of love and lube, and you end up with a car that can outrun the cops _and_ blend into a crowd.

Right now, Geoff would give his left nut for a car like that. Instead all he had was a street full of SUVs and junkers that would be lucky to go over 40. He cursed before jerking his elbow into the driver-side window of a big empty black SUV.

No alarm. “Cocky rich pricks,” he muttered, climbing into the leather seat. Keys were still in the damn car.

“Vagabond is in the air,” came Jack’s voice in his ear. “I repeat, the package is aboard.”

Sirens wailing, a police car whipped past Geoff, no attention given to the rain of broken glass. They’d caught wind of something.

“All right, kids,” Geoff called, “we’ve got incoming. Michael?”

“You’ve gotta buy me a few minutes, boss.”

Geoff gritted his teeth. “Gavin, how’s that distraction coming?”

“Coming,” Gavin answered. “Jack, what’s your location, love?”

“Flying northeast toward Vinewood, why?”

“Soon as you see a flare behind you, leg it in the opposite direction.”

There was a pause here, where, Geoff realized, Ray would have pointed out how fucking stupid it was to say _leg it_ when Jack was _flying_. But Ray wasn’t there to make the comment. They were all waiting for nothing.

“Right, copy that,” Jack said. If Geoff didn’t know better, he’d say everything was normal. He loved that woman.

As it turned out, the word _flare_ was a bit of an understatement. Gavin’s distraction was an explosive fireworks display in the middle of the city. They burst in a random explosion of color and smoke, and Geoff sent up a silent prayer that Gavin would keep all ten of his fingers.

Trouble was Gavin’s display was only a few blocks north of Michael’s position in the flaming rubble of the old bowling alley. It wouldn’t be enough to draw the cops away from the scene—definitely not all of them.

Geoff pulled out. “Michael, your few minutes are up, buddy. I’m coming in to pick you up, and it’s gonna get pretty hot up there.”

Michael made a frustrated noise, followed by a sharp swear. Geoff knew what he meant—that Michael hadn’t found what he wanted, hadn’t found Ray.

“You gonna tell me what I’m jumping into?” Michael asked, defeated.

Geoff frowned, something akin to embarrassment edging into his voice. “Big-ass SUV.”

A beat, then, “Not the best choice, Geoffrey,” Gavin pointed out.

“Well, it wasn’t my first choice either,” he gritted. “You can criticize me later, idiots,” he gritted.

“Uh, okay, another problem,” Michael cried. “Gavin, your diversion fucking sucks. This place is crawling with cops.”

“They make you, boi?” Gavin asked, voice tense.

“Not yet,” he spat. “Did I forget to mention it’s also _on fucking fire_?” Michael hissed over the perhaps-imagined sound of the crumbling structure. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to get out of here without being seen or turning into Ghost Rider.”

“Stay put, I’m on my way,” cried Geoff, groping at the ignition.

“Uh, no, bad idea!”

Except it was too late. The van crested the hill to a police roadblock, the street closed off as the officers fanned out in search of the culprit—and the cops would find Michael. Michael was fucking lucky they didn’t know that because apparently, crashing an SUV into a roadblock looked pretty goddamn suspicious.

The cops opened fire on Geoff almost immediately. The windshield shattered under the hailstorm of bullets.

Geoff swore, ducking on reflex. The noise was deafening. “What’s going on down there?” Jack shouted in his ear. He waved her off, climbing over the center console toward the back of the van.

Los Santos police were always a little trigger-happy, but this was ridiculous. Gunshots staggered as Geoff lay in the backseat, out of line of sight. “Gavin, I’m gonna need another getaway car.”

“On it,” he said, unquestioning.

Geoff wasn’t sure how many guns were trained on the SUV, how many officers had given up, had taken his silence for death. Over the comm, he heard Michael straining, grunting, swearing. Michael had an entire building ready to fall on his head if he didn’t get shot first.

Geoff kicked out the back, slammed the door shut again for cover. An aggressive bumper sticker declared, _FUCK YOUR PRIUS_ under his tattooed hand. “I feel ya, buddy,” Geoff sighed, rapping his knuckles against the metal.

“Geoff, you say the word, I’ll come right back and get you,” Jack said, fierce loyalty in her voice.

“I know you will,” Geoff said honestly, “but you get you and Ryan to 636. We’ll meet you there.” He leaned to peek past the side of the van, enough for a rough headcount. A dozen LSPD, maybe more edging past the bowling alley toward Gavin’s fireworks.

The blaze lit up the street, brighter than the streetlights lining the parking lot. The roof had been all but destroyed. Sheets of corrugated metal had landed, twisted, in the parking lot. Its cinderblock walls were charred and fractured, some blown out altogether. It was hard to imagine anyone surviving even now, let alone when it had blown.

Inside, the wooden support beams cracked and groaned. Geoff needed to get to Michael.

“Michael, I’m coming to you,” Geoff said.

“Okay!” Michael exclaimed, like it was the worst idea he’d ever heard. “Only a dozen cops and a burning fucking building in the way.”

“Michael,” came Ryan’s thoughtful voice, “you still have those grenades you took off of Gavin?”

Michael’s laugh came breathless and relieved. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do. Geoff, I’ll cover you,” he said. “Watch your back,” he warned.

“Always do.” Geoff watched for Michael’s signal. He knew it wouldn’t be much, not with this much interference. LSPD were idiots, but they weren’t blind. Geoff knew there would only be one shot.

The structure was still about 50 feet away, not an insurmountable distance by any definition, but Geoff was no Usain Bolt, either. Across the parking lot, he thought he saw movement in front of the smoke as something ejected from behind the wall.

“Fire in the hole,” Michael added, a secretive afterthought.

Geoff took off. All he heard over the roar of his own heartbeat was the slapping of his shoes on concrete and the pinging of bullets around him.

Then came the explosion.

Geoff didn’t look; he trusted Michael’s aim. Vaguely, he registered the broken panic in the officers’ voices as he rolled behind the half-crumbled cinderblock wall that shielded Michael’s body.

Michael was pale under the concrete dust smeared on his cheeks. His features smudged, somehow. Incomplete, unfocused. Under the dust, even his violent red hair looked faded and sickly.

Strapped to his back, pinning his jacket against his chest, was a bubblegum pink rifle.

_Ray’s_ sniper rifle.

Geoff’s stomach fell.

Michael caught him staring, his gaze locked on the rifle. The implications. “Yeah,” he said quietly.

“Shit.”

A cold, quiet breath of grief stirred between them before a spray of bullets found them, concrete chipping away in a haze of dust. Geoff peered around the edge and emptied a clip at the diminishing crowd of police.

Michael caught his eye as Geoff reloaded. A second grenade bounced in his palm like a pitcher’s baseball. With a tense twitch of his mouth, Michael lobbed it over the wall. Geoff watched as it landed beneath a cop car, and he reached over to drag Michael down as the explosion rocked the ground beneath them, the blast reaching just over their heads.

The car flipped twice in the air like an olympic gymnast before falling twenty feet from their position. The smell of burning hair teased Geoff’s nostrils, and he brushed a hand over his head, unsure if it was the smell of his own or of the cops’.

“One more,” Michael said, hand dipping into his pocket, “and that’s it.”

“Make it count,” Geoff said.

“Got you a ride,” Gavin’s voice came over the comm. _At last_ , Geoff thought as two more police cars pulled up. “You are not gonna like it, though.”

“If it has wheels and a motor, I don’t care.”

Geoff heard it before he saw it, peeling down the street.

It was a motorcycle.

It was a _motorcycle_.

“Is that a fucking motorcycle?” Geoff snapped.

“Listen,” Gavin said, a rare edge of irritation in his voice, “I did what I could with what I’ve got, if you’d like to stay there—”

A bullet ricocheted off of the cement block in front of Geoff.

“Nope,” Michael said airily, “we’ll make it work.”

“I’ve got it parked outside the 24/7.”

Geoff fixed Michael with a dark glare. “Alright Michael, if you’re so onboard with this plan, get your ass over there,” Geoff ordered. “Gavin and I will cover you.”

“Oi,” Gavin objected, “I’m driving.”

“Yeah,” Geoff agreed, “and you’re gonna get your own bike and drive in the other direction so the cops chase you and Michael and I get out of here alive.” Divide and conquer, that was the saying, right? This was Los Santos, where there was one biker, there were four more parked nearby.

“Geoff—”

“That wasn’t a suggestion!” His voice dragged like the rough edge of a nail. Dimly, he heard the roar of Gavin’s engine. “Jack, what’s your status?”

“Wheels down,” she responded. “We’re safe. Now get out of there.” An untrained ear wouldn’t hear the plea in her voice, the ache that made Geoff want to do everything to soothe it.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a grin.

“I _hate_ when you do that.”

“I know you do, babe.”

Michael frowned. “Less flirting, more running.” He pulled a grenade from his belt. “Last one. Get ready.”

“Gavin, you copy?”

A long silence worried at Geoff like the bullets on concrete, like the weight of the rifle strapped to Michael’s back.

Gavin’s voice was strained. “Your bike’s on the street corner a block east. You see me, you throw the damn grenade.”

“Geoff’s riding bitch,” Michael was quick to say, something like irritation in his voice.

Geoff shook his head. “You’re a son of a bitch, you know that.” Every joke between them was tense with relief.

“Yeah, I know.”

In just moments, Gavin ripped by on a bike that, in Geoff’s opinion, went entirely too fast for something that didn’t have a fucking roof.

Without missing a beat, Michael launched his last grenade and broke into a sprint.

There was a roll of gunfire, then an explosion, then nothing but the faint echo of Gavin’s engine.

Geoff ran.

Geoff had been dodging bullets for years, every time the adrenaline in his blood reminding him he was alive, alive, alive. He knew his crew, and knew his city. Michael was waiting, straddling the motorcycle, short bursts of suppressive fire against the approaching sirens. Few shots followed as Geoff climbed on behind him. He handed his SMG off to Geoff with practiced effort, and the bike roared to life beneath them.

Geoff wrapped one arm around Michael’s middle, his other hand balancing the gun with his finger on the trigger. “We’re on the move. Gavin, buddy, talk to me.”

It was hard to hear anything over the roar of the motor. He heard what might have been Gavin’s strained voice through a burst of static. Geoff fired off a stream of shots at the car in pursuit. They didn’t do much damage, but it made Geoff feel better.

“C’mon, Gavin, what’s your status?”

His arm tightened around Michael’s waist as he changed lanes.

“Maybe he’s lost his comm,” Michael said, voice tense, raised over the sound of the motorcycle.

“And maybe he’s in trouble,” Geoff snapped. “We have to go back.”

“No fucking way,” Michael snapped. “Gavin’s perfectly capable of losing the cops on his own.” He took a sharp turn, the rear wheel banking on the curb. Geoff’s heart leapt into his throat.

A siren whipped in behind them. Geoff released a spread of cover fire while Michael dragged the bike across the road, weaving around the oncoming traffic. The cop car stopped abruptly, slamming into a light post. The driver was dead. It felt good, felt like progress.

“All we’ll do is bring ‘em right to him.”

Geoff didn’t like it, but Michael was right. “Take this left,” he said. He held onto Michael with both arms, his face tucked into his sweaty, singed leather collar. “We gotta head north.”

“I know how to fucking get us out of here. You worry about our tail.”

They lost the police half a mile up the northbound highway. After what felt like hours, they rolled to a stop outside the warehouse.

Inside were a couple of cars, by far not their best, and a cache of weapons that would hold them through any emergency they might face up here—which was to say, not a lot. The northern warehouse was for days like this.

They hadn’t yet had a day like this, though.

Ryan greeted them with a semi-automatic, which was its own form of relief. In the moment of recognition, he dropped it to his side and ripped the mask from his face, his cheeks flushed and sweaty. There was something unguarded in his bright eyes.

Before he could pin it down, Jack greeted them both with a hug, which was its own form of desperation. Geoff held on just as hard. Her bounce of red hair smelled like jet fuel.

Michael, trembling from the come-down, from the rage, pushed past him. “How much did we get?” he asked, his voice a mockery of their usual celebration. “How much _cash_ was worth Ray’s life? Fifty bucks? A hundred?” He rushed toward Ryan, body primed for a fight.

Without another word, Michael yanked the sniper rifle— _Ray’s_ sniper rifle—over his shoulder and thrust it into Ryan’s broad chest before stalking off into the darkened warehouse.

Ryan’s hands shook as he fumbled the rifle. It fell into the dirt. He didn’t move to pick it up. He had no answer for Michael. No fight, either.

“Geoff?” came a voice over the comm.

Geoff dropped from Jack’s embrace. “Gavin?” Her fingers wrapped around his wrists, keeping him close. Now it was _his_ hands that were shaking.

“I’m coming in,” he said. He sounded tired. “Don’t gun me down or anything.” Relief dripped like sweat from every pore.

“We won’t, buddy. Just this time, you get a free pass.” Geoff wanted to cry.

Gavin may have tried to laugh in response. He couldn’t tell over the comm.

Jack’s warm hands cupped Geoff’s cheeks. Hell, maybe he was crying. He let her hold him while the dim rumble of Gavin’s motorcycle drew closer, the sun rising on the horizon behind him.

No one said a word as Gavin dismounted, letting the motorcycle drop from between his scrawny legs like a carcass into the sand. He traced his eyes across their faces like he was counting.

“Where’s Michael?” he asked, fear in his voice.

“Inside,” Ryan said, his voice rough.

Gavin’s shoulders slumped. “So he didn’t find…”

Ryan toed at the dirt at his feet, gave the rifle a soft kick. Without a word, he took long, dark strides into the warehouse.

“Oh.” There was loss in Gavin’s voice, and it filled Geoff’s chest with ice water. Gavin reached down, picked up Ray’s rifle. “Guess I’ll check on them, then,” he said, voice rigid.

Geoff shrugged, grief in his bones.

Losing people was a part of the job. It was the part of the job that Geoff unquestionably hated. It was the part of the job he remembered most, tattooed into his skin, one line after another, carved into the inside of his forearm, hash marks. One for each of the times one of his own had swapped spit with death.

And a red one he didn’t talk about.

He was going to have to get another one. Red like blood. Red like Michael’s despair. Red like six crew and five still breathing.

Jack called his name quietly, a suggestion of a plea.

“Yeah,” Geoff breathed, “I know.”

“Hey,” she called. Geoff looked up. Between her fingers was a cigarette. In the morning light, it was tinged pink, and Geoff took it gratefully. He didn’t smoke, but right now, he could use it.

“Fuck,” he huffed in a cloud of smoke.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Listen...maybe he’ll still...we’ve had worse brushes with death, right?”

There was the time the chopper exploded seconds after she and Ryan had bailed. There was the time Gavin went flying from his car after he hit a pole, and landed in a tuck-and-roll that left him with a broken arm, but so, so alive. There was the time Michael and Geoff had been cornered on a rooftop, and Jack had caught them on the wing of a plane mid-air.

Why was it this time, then, that only five walked away from it?

“Maybe,” he conceded eventually.

Inside the warehouse, Geoff heard Michael yelling.

Yelling was normal. At least they had that.

“You should go in there,” Geoff told Jack.

She laughed, quick and painful. “Probably. No one else can keep them off each other.” Maybe it was some kind of joke, but Geoff wasn’t laughing.

Normal was going to be hard to come back to.

“No, Ryan” Jack said faintly, “you are not taking a missile launcher out!”

Normal was always relative.

They’d be fine.

Eventually.


	2. Chapter 2

“You’re a real piece of shit, you know that,” Michael said through the filter of his cigarette. His elbows strived to dig a groove into the railing.

Gavin frowned beside him. “What did I do now?” 

Gavin could read anybody. On an ordinary day, he could read Michael—and better than he ever showed, too. Poker face—never show your cards. Even if it was your crew. Even if it was Michael Jones.

Lately, Gavin felt like he was missing a card from Michael’s deck. Ever since Ray…

It had only been a few days. Long enough to make sure the cops weren’t looking for them, that Tuggey wasn’t going to retaliate on the hit on her territory.

It had been long enough to make sure Gavin could do his damn job and clear any evidence they’d left behind. The explosion had taken care of most of it. That was the whole idea, after all.

“Not…” Michael sighed. “Not you.” He spared a glance back toward the door.

Geoff was inside the club with Jack, and Ryan was—somewhere. Ryan didn’t really do people, and he didn’t really do wakes, but this was  _ Ray. _ This was crew. This was family.

Ryan could shrug all he wanted, and brush it off, but Gavin saw the way he looked at the pink sniper rifle no one would touch, how he lingered on it long enough to matter.

Ray mattered. Even to Ryan.

Maybe it hadn’t been long enough, after all. Gavin didn’t know; he’d never lost anyone, not like this. He never had anyone to lose before; now he had a family. How terrifying was that?

“Oh,” Gavin replied, a hesitant beat between them.

The club was an old standby, owned by a friend of a friend of someone Geoff used to know—or something like that. It wasn’t so loud or so crowded that they couldn’t meet up and talk, and it wasn’t so off-the-beaten-path that they could be pegged as regulars shifty enough to get pulled out by the cops.

There were dancers in the back, the low beat of music keeping them on the move, and the roll of drunken laughter masking their conversation. And the food was good, the smell of grease filling the air.

Gavin was pretty sure Jack paid off the bartender to keep quiet, too.

Outside, he and Michael made up one end of a row of anonymous clubbers smoking their cigarettes, the smell of tobacco and reefer filling the night air. Gavin stuck at Michael’s side while he finished the drag of his cigarette, embers crawling toward Michael’s lips.

“Ray,” Michael sighed, answering the question Gavin hadn’t asked, but which hung between them amid the smoke. “Piece—of—shit,” he reiterated, staccato.

“For...for what?” Gavin asked. “Dying?”

“It was fucking stupid,” Michael said, not really an answer.

“It was an  _ accident _ .”

“Exactly,” Michael said, not quite loud enough to be a shout. Gavin frowned. He should be yelling by now. “It wasn’t his fault, but…” He shook his head. Gavin had no idea how that sentence could end. Michael stubbed out his cigarette, harder than he needed to, scratching a black drag of soot on the brick wall. “C’mon, Gavvy, let’s go in.”

Gavin let Michael lead. Instead of his usual brown leather, he was wearing a bright purple hoodie—Ray’s hoodie. It hadn’t sat right with Gavin, but Michael had grudgingly shrugged it on before leaving the penthouse. “It’s just a fucking jacket,” he’d lied.

A hand caught his arm as a small, dark-skinned woman asked him for a light. He searched his pockets for a moment before coming up empty. “Sorry love,” Gavin said, pulling away. At least the hoodie was easy to pick out of the crowd, he thought, scanning for the shape of Michael’s shoulders.

Jack waved them both over from her perch in Geoff’s lap. There were two empty bottles in front of the two of them, and another glass in Geoff’s hand—something neat. Gavin wondered if the beers were both Jack’s. She wasn’t a heavy drinker, only really drank at celebrations, but Geoff didn’t tend to mix his drinks, beer and the hard stuff. They hadn’t been here long enough for two beers, not the way Jack usually nursed her drinks.

Ryan sat with his back to the wall, drinking water, like usual.

Gavin had asked before, why it was that Ryan never got bevved up, why even in the safehouse, even when laying low, he never touched a drop. On the opposite end of it, Gavin and Ray were two peas of the same pod, eager to get their hands on anything and everything at all. Try anything once, live like you’ll die twice.

Ryan had answered in that cagey way he had of avoiding a question by being extra creepy. Gavin was marginally sure it was a stalling tactic, sleight-of-hand distraction. “Can’t kill me if I can kill them first. Can’t kill them first if I’m slowed up.”

Gavin had let it go.

Michael downed a shot in one go, and then another before anyone said anything.

A crease formed between Jack’s eyebrows. “We’re here to remember Ray’s time with us,” she said, “not to forget the night.”

Michael met her eyes. “I’d rather forget that he’s fucking gone, frankly.”

“Yeah, you and the rest of us,” Geoff gritted. There was a hardness to his expression that Gavin wasn’t used to seeing, tired and pleading under the bite of his words. “But maybe enjoy being  _ with _ the rest of us, because  _ we’re _ still here, dickhole.”

A heavy silence draped across the table while Michael fingered at the rim of his empty shot glass, avoiding Geoff. This night, Gavin realized, was a stress test. A study in grief. They’d run into some close calls, but they were always a reason to celebrate, a bird flipped at Death. This could change things, he realized, growing cold.

Geoff had lived through grief. Gavin didn’t know much, never could get an answer out of Geoff—only that whatever loss he’d suffered, it had also driven a rift in his old crew. Geoff wouldn’t let that happen again, Gavin was confident.

“First time I really met him, we were on the same roof,” Jack said.

“Are we really doing this?” Michael muttered, spinning his empty glass on the table.

Jack snatched the glass off the table mid-spin. “I almost fucking killed him because he came up behind me while I was clearing for take-off. You know, picking off the guys with the guns, one at a time. He took out a creep with a knife who thought he could get the drop on me while my back was turned. Then he reloaded my gun and gave me tips on my damn grip.”

“I remember that,” Geoff said with a small grin. “You got him back later and made him bail out of the chopper over the water.”

“That was before me, I think,” Ryan said. His hair was curling at his temples, still wet from a recent shower. He usually pulled it back.

_ I think _ , Ryan said, but of course it was before him. Ray and Michael had run with the crew for almost a year before Geoff brought the Vagabond in. Ryan was always doing that, discrediting his statements, planting doubt and hints of a meeker disposition than they knew he was capable of.

“The first thing he did was try to kill me,” Ryan said, subdued, “and I don’t think he ever really warmed up to me,” he said with an embittered laugh. His tight smile was ironic, but there was a genuine sadness to him that Gavin wanted to believe.

If ever there was a reason to think Ryan had a heart, Ray might have been it.

Gavin probably wasn’t supposed to know that, so he said nothing.

“To be fair,” Jack pointed out, “you tried to kill him first.”

“Well, if you want to get technical.”

“I didn’t even want to hire him,” Geoff said, his glass suddenly empty. “I was looking for a demo guy, not a sniper.”

“Yeah, well,” Michael interjected, “we were a package deal.” With a signal of his hand, he ordered another shot. Caution flags weren’t unfamiliar to Gavin, but Gavin tended to leap past them in a single bound. Michael, though—this wasn’t like him. 

“Michael,” Gavin said, reaching out to halt him.

Michael jerked his arm out from underneath Gavin’s hand. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

Gavin pulled his hand back as though he’d been burnt. “Sorry, boi,” he said quietly.

“Don’t—don’t take it out on Gavin,” Geoff said.

“It’s fine,” Gavin said. “I get it.”

Michael snorted. “You really,  _ really _ don’t.” He paused to change his order to a beer. “I fucking came out here with Ray. We ran together in Lib City for almost a year, just the two of us. You don’t know what kind of hell that was. Don’t even pretend you do!” When his drink came, he downed a third of it in one breath.

“Michael,” Gavin said, his teeth clenched tight. “You weren’t the only one who cared about X-Ray.” The nickname just slipped out. With Ray, everything was like that. He was a terse bloke who liked to play it close, but something about him encouraged affection in everyone else. Maybe none more than Michael, all that history between them with every touch of the hand.

Gavin wasn’t the best at relationships, but he knew when two people were  _ something _ . He’d run solo for so long, he didn’t know if it was born out of the natural codependence of running together, or if it was just  _ Michael and Ray _ , but they’d come to Los Santos with a weak spot for each other visible from space to anyone who could read them right.

So yeah, sure, he got it.

“I’m not saying you’re, I dunno, being unreasonable?” Gavin continued, “But maybe you’re not the only one fucked up by this.”

His chair dragged on the floor when he pushed away from the table. He didn’t get angry, not really, and he wasn’t angry now, but Michael  _ always _ pulled this shit. For all he liked to say Liberty City was behind him, Michael dragged an awful lot of it behind him. Ray wasn’t the only thing that came with him from that city, and Michael refused to see it. And anytime it came up, he always took it out on everyone else.

So Gavin left to take a leak, and when he came back, he thought, maybe Michael would be over himself.

He didn’t make it back, though, not right away.

“I think your friends can wait a few minutes, don’t you?” It was the same buttery voice he’d heard outside, the same woman who’d stopped him for a light. He didn’t recognize her, but she spoke like she knew him. Lots of people knew  _ of _ Gavin, but far less lived to know him face to face. Geoff usually made sure of that.

He could bear to find out who she was—who she was  _ with _ .

She was dressed like a honeypot, black dress low-cut, hair long and straight, ending in a blonde ombre. She was half a foot shorter than Gavin, but she had a confident hand on the small of his back as she led him past the bar, stopping only long enough to pick up two bottles.

People who walked like that, people who knew Gavin—the best intersection was anyone involved in the business, in the workings of Los Santos’ criminal networks.

“I should warn you,” he said, “if you’re trying to chat me up, I’m taken, love.”

“No one needs to know,” she suggested with a wink. He didn’t flinch as she whipped her hair over her shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she dismissed. “This is a business beer,” she said, offering him the bottle.

He accepted. After all, they were already talking business. “And what business is that?”

She laughed, and it wasn’t kind. “Don’t play dumb, Free, you’ll insult both of us.”

This stopped him short. Gavin wasn’t in the habit of giving out his surname—not even to their allies. “You know an awful lot about me,” he observed, leaning into her. “You seem to have me at the disadvantage.”

“New experience?” she asked, her smile a sly flirtation. Gavin could play with that.

“A little,” he admitted, a shy smile toying at his lips. He teased at the condensation on his bottle. “Interested in returning the favor?”

Even if he could get a name out of her—if she had the kind of connections that gave her information on him, he could narrow that down easily.

Everyone had a price, a family, a favorite body part. He had the Vagabond; someone would talk. Information rarely led nowhere.

“Not particularly,” she said, pushing at her coaster.

“So does this mean you’re hiring, then?” Gavin asked, crossing his arms over his chest. If she wanted to play this like a business proposition, then so be it. “Looking for a crew for some harebrained scheme?”

She crossed her slim legs, her skirt hiking up her thighs. “I was thinking something a little more...mutually beneficial.”

Gavin felt abruptly unsure they were speaking the same subtext after all. It was an odd turn of phrase. It could mean any number of things in this business—some less savory than others. This woman was a curious puzzle: lithe, quick-witted, and glamorous—not Vinewood fake glitz and plastic either.

Got herself in too deep, maybe. Looking for the Fakes to give her a way out?

“If you’re looking for—what, protection?” She gave a small half-nod, almost an agreement. “If you want to negotiate, you’ve got to have something to offer me in return, love.”

“Yeah? How’s information sound?”

Gavin laughed, disbelief stretching across his expression. “Maybe you don’t know me so well after all. Information’s my business,” he said, mouth twisting with a cocky smirk. “It’s going to have to be off-the-rack.”

“And yet I already know you better than you know me,” she said, shrugging. “How’s this for a freebie, then: we’ve got some up-and-comers making waves. You’ve been here long enough to know what a disaster that can be.” He had.

At the top of the Los Santos food chain were the untouchables, immovable fixtures. Anywhere below that, you had hungry mouths gobbling up territory and every bit counted. Territory, money, hired guns—it all added up in the ruthless calculus of gang wars. Cash-in right and you could climb your way to the top, maybe even swing favor your way.

Here was the problem: more variables—more  _ waves _ —and suddenly that climb turned unpredictable. Structured as it was, Los Santos was as controlled as chaos ever could be. Without that, it was just entropy.

The woman leaned across the table. Gavin’s eyes darted from her cleavage to her face. She smiled like she knew. Hell, she could play this game; she knew. “I’ve got ears on every bedroom wall, and leather boots on the ground at every street corner. So, what do you say?”

Secrets. If she was connected with the city’s street walkers, she had immediate access to the kind of private information that would take Gavin ages to track down through normal channels.

He wasn’t actually a moron; he wasn’t about to take a deal on someone’s say-so, not without Geoff, not without his crew.

God, but it was tempting. What if they were missing the advantage here? What if these  _ new waves _ were the exact kind of thing that could get another one of them killed?

How quickly could he rule out the suspicion that had broiled among the crew, that someone else was involved in Ray’s death?

Shit,  _ Ray _ . He was here to say goodbye to a friend, not to discuss—whatever this was.

“I don’t make the deals, love,” he said, recovering. “You should really be talking to my boss.”

“I’m asking  _ you _ ,” she said, her dark eyes hardening, no longer flirtatious. “I”m not interested in your boss.”

Gavin’s mouth pressed so tight he felt his upper lip disappear. “If you know me as well as you seem to, you know I don’t work alone anymore.”

She hummed, disinterested, just barely audible over the bass in the club. “No, I guess not.”

“Then we have nothing more to discuss.” He pushed back to step away, but her long, pointed nails caught at his forearm.

“This was a one-time offer, Free. Just so you know what you’re leaving behind tonight.”

Guilt crawled at his stomach. He shook his head. “It’s not what I’m leaving behind. It’s what I’m going back to.” It sounded good, but he wasn’t sure he even had himself convinced.

“Your loss.” She watched him closely as he stood from the table. The lights made her skin glow warm, but there was ice in her eyes, something vague and predatory that made Gavin’s skin feel too tight.

Walk away, he told himself. He ditched the beer she’d given him at the bar. He didn’t take job offers, sight-unseen, and he take strange drinks, either.

When he returned to the table, Michael fixed him with a glare. “Where the fuck have you been?”

“Hoping you’d cooled down, boi,” he replied smoothly.

Geoff fixed him with a penetrating stare. “Who’s your friend back there?”

Gavin shook his head, hoping to convey the right message.  _ No deal. _ “Just some bird tried to buy me a drink,” he said.

“Not thirsty?” Geoff asked, his gaze unwavering.

Gavin felt his lips turn up in what he hoped was a convincing smile. “Plenty to drink right here.”

“You want a pretty lady to buy you a drink, I’m right here,” Jack said, no longer in Geoff’s lap, but sinking against the table at Gavin’s side, fluttering her eyelashes. She was definitely a few in if she was flirting with Gavin.

“I’ll buy my own, thanks,” Gavin said, laughing.

“If you’re buying…” Geoff suggested.

“Oh hell no,” Jack said, straightening up, her finger pointed in his face. “Your bar tab is a little expensive for me.”

“Says the million dollar woman,” Ryan jabbed.

“Three million, actually.”

“Nobody likes a braggart,” Ryan insisted.

Geoff smiled under his mustache. “Oh, I don’t know. Tell me again, how much?” he asked, his eyelids dropping. Gavin could never tell if it was an affectation or if for Jack he was actually that easy. He could live with that ambiguity.

“Okay, you two. Break it up,” Michael said, ghost of a smile on his face.

Gavin reached over and put a warm hand on his knee. Michael didn’t brush him off. Gavin called that one a win.

* * *

Across the bar, the woman watched, a scowl on her face. She tapped out a message on her phone.

It began to vibrate in her hand almost immediately, the ringtone inaudible.

She answered.

The noise from the club masked her words—she was counting on it. “You were right,” she admitted begrudgingly, “Free didn’t take the bait.”

She paused, listening.

“He  _ was _ tempted,” she pointed out. “They’re down a man.” She watched the crew toast a melange of glasses across the bar.

Her eyebrows quirked at the reply. “We need more,” she observed in response. Another pause, punctuated with a determined grin. “On it.”

She pocketed her phone in her clutch and strode out of the club like she owned it. She had a mission, and she wouldn’t be stopped.


End file.
